Perspective

I was able to relieve Martha at about 12pm yesterday. Adam was doing better, but after a rough morning we were happy to stay put, watch cartoons, play on webkinz, do a crossword puzzle and just hang out.

Adam's appetite eventually kicked back in around 2pm. He requested pizza from the food court on the second floor.

We waited 3 more hours for Dr. Collier to make a brief visit. His observation: "If Adam can hold down pizza he can go home." An hour later we were leaving. They sent Adam home with prescriptions for an antibiotic which he will be on for the duration of his chemo and the anti nausea medication he had been given prior to chemo starting.

Volunteers had stopped by earlier and let Adam pick out a hat made by the volunteers meant to cover balding heads. Most of the selection was a little girlie, Adam picked out the hat with the hand painted panda.

I remember when Martha was waiting to be discharged after having Camille 4 years ago and how anxious and impatient I was to get her and us out of there. Really there was none of that with this prolonged day of waiting. Maybe the effort to show more patience is paying off. Maybe just being happy that Adam seemed comfortable and past the worst aspects of the nausea were good enough. This tri-weekly admission will seem routine, I guess, at some point so I might as well accept the pace at which the hospital moves.

After two and half weeks of build up and hearing 'all about it' this was the first 'real' experience for Adam as a cancer patient. This wasn't more imaging or blood work; this was Adam being admitted on the 6th floor of Vandy Childrens Hospital, the cancer ward. He was amazingly good. Yes, he has been handling the whole thing well with big servings of 10 (almost 11) year old sarcasm, 'I'm bored' chants and ear buds in ears ignoring, but with this admission, with the chemo and the vomit, Adam dropped just about all of that and dealt with it.

On the night Adam was getting his first round of chemo an adolescent boy down the hall was dying. I think he passed away in the early morning. The boy's whole family was there. They had been dealing with their beloved child's illness for a while. You could tell because there wasn't the anguish, weeping, rage or denial but from the distance that we saw the loving acceptance that the fight was done and it was time. We found out later he had leukemia.